Legal Question - warning label on product

One of our projects is niche ecommerce store, we sell baby products. Not crazy money, but none the less smng.
We sell primary from our site and know want to create brand and try to target some of the brick and mortal store owners.

The major problem we have:
Our product is baby product, which contain some small parts, i don't know what baby have to do though to choke or smng - the product is 100% safe, and moms buy it all the time.

But i am 100% these label would have very bad effect for sales, and baby store owners won't want to carry smng like, when you can have the same product from my competition without label.

We checked competition - most don't have this label - just "adult supervision required" thing in their descriptions...
There is one company who put the label, but they are doing bad(weakest performance from all competition)

We have separate company(S-corp) for this project and my accounting told that in the case of law suit or smng i can close the company and it won't effect my other company(which has some assets i don't want to risk) or me.

Could be bypassed by putting a small disclaimer on the packaging maybe? Won't deter many customers either.

Click to expand...

yup, that's what i am planning to do disclaimer saying that adult supervision required.
or WARNING! Choking Hazard; Small parts. - without the "Not for children under 3 years." part.

But how does it work? Can i be sued for this? Any experiences? In disclaimer it will say that using the product you remove all responsibility from Our Company Name Inc, etc... But still i brake US law by not having the label...

My plan is to risk it, make money, and ... than if smng will go after me close the company - bad plan?

Let me get this straight, you are worried that you will get sued for making a product that is a choking hazard for small children, instead of being worried about the fact that you are producing a product that can potentially kill said children, and you do not want to even warn them of the hazard because it will affect sales.?

It seems to me that you are more worried about getting sued than you are about killing children. No offense, but if you created a toy with small parts that kills my child, then just close the company to get out of it, I am going to sue you personally, try to file criminal charges, and maybe hire a couple of Hells Angels to come use you for a quintain.

Here is a news flash, you are going to get sued if you make consumer goods, probably many times. Get over it, product lawsuits are easy to file and rewarding to he people suing, they seldom go to trial because they are settled under the insurance limits, and the lawyers on both sides make money on them so they are not going away. And most product lawsuits have no basis.

You need insurance, and your insurance will likely require you to meet packaging requirements. If you are going to do this without liability insurance, your'e nuts. If you are going to have the insurance, let them deal with it.

Without insurance, you are building a business to give away to someone.

The wording of your disclaimer has very little legal weight. You have a fiduciary responsibility to produce a safe product. The disclaimer is just a paper shield that can be swept aside. All it does is indicate that you were aware of a hazard that existed, and took steps to mitigate the hazard.

In a court of law, or a criminal investigation, you are screwed. If you were aware of the hazard, and took inadequate steps to minimize the hazard, you are just as liable as if you identified the hazard and did nothing. Only when the hazard is completely mitigated are you in the clear, and even then you can be sued and will have to go thru the courts to get cleared.

If you put a partial disclaimer on the product, you may fall into what your jusrisdiction sees as inadequate steps. If you put in a full industry standard disclaimer, you may avoid this.

But for heavens sake, don't design toys with small parts for babies and toddlers.

You need to follow all regulations on this. Even send you product for independent testing to verify it is safe for the age group concerned.
Put all warnings necessary on the product.
All small children, toddlers and babies put EVERYTHING in their mouth and one incident could have devastating consequences for a child AND your business.

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